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The Day the Tigers Tipped Pitches for the Mick

Mickey Mantle rounding the bases after hitting his 535th career home run. Denny McLain and catcher Jim Price let Mantle know what pitch was coming.Credit
Bettmann/Corbis

The notion that Alex Rodriguez has tipped pitches to opposing players in return for their tipping pitches to him — one of the more bizarre allegations in the new biography of the Yankees third baseman — has generally shocked players and executives throughout baseball.

It shocked Jim Price, too. But Price, a Detroit Tigers television broadcaster, at least spoke from experience.

A few weeks from retirement and tied with Jimmie Foxx with 534 career home runs, Mantle came to the plate in the eighth inning with the Tigers comfortably ahead, 6-1. Detroit had already clinched the American League pennant — this was before leagues were split into two divisions, let alone three — and McLain had already won his 30th game.

“When I got there, Denny said, ‘Hey, big guy, should I let him hit one?’ ” Price recalled Thursday night in a telephone interview. “I said it was a great idea. Mickey was always nice to me. So I went back behind the plate and Mickey, like he always did, was tapping the plate with his bat when I said, ‘Want us to groove one for you?’ ”

Mantle apparently didn’t believe Price, but when he saw McLain nodding on the mound, he understood what was going on.

“High and tight, mediocre cheese,” Price said Mantle responded.

McLain served up a few that were apparently not gift-wrapped quite as neatly as the Mick preferred. But then came exactly what Mantle was looking for, and he hit a rocket into the upper deck in right field, the next-to-last home run of his career.

“McLain was clapping as Mickey was rounding the bases,” Price said. “And when he crossed home plate, Mickey thanked me. The next batter was Joe Pepitone, and he said, ‘Give me one, too.’ And I go, ‘No way, you’re not Mickey Mantle.’ ”

Getting McLain’s recollection of these events is a little problematic. Not only have convictions for drug trafficking, embezzlement and racketeering made him a less-than-believable witness, but he didn’t even get the story right in his 1975 autobiography, deliciously titled “Nobody’s Perfect.”

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The book is long out of print, but Bobby Plapinger, perhaps the premier used sports book dealer, sent a snippet:

“The first pitch I tossed up there to him had no velocity on it at all. Matter of fact, it was sort of a humpbacked thing. Mantle couldn’t believe his eyes. The Iron Mike machine pitches better than that.

“Bill Freehan was catching and he couldn’t call time fast enough. He came out to the mound in that ‘Big Ten trot’ and asked me, ‘What in the hell is going on?’

“Now, isn’t that ridiculous? I’m a kid from Chicago’s South Side. He’s a guy with a college education, and I have to tell him what’s happening.”

But the event certainly took place, as Price — not Freehan — has been happy to admit to since, although Freehan often gets the credit thanks to McLain’s faulty memory.

Price, who has broadcast Tigers games for more than three times as many years (18) as he caught them (5), said he has never heard of such a scene happening with any other player, past or present. He said he never regretted giving Mantle one last hurrah — even though it technically tampered with the integrity of baseball’s sacred career home run list.

The allegations about Rodriguez in Selena Roberts’s book — attributed to anonymous sources — took Price by surprise. To this point, no player has corroborated the allegations or said he has even heard of such a scheme involving Rodriguez.

“What we did was a gesture to a great player at end of his career,” Price said. “It was offered by the pitcher — it was his suggestion and Mickey went along with it. We’d already clinched the pennant. I don’t feel that I did anything wrong at all.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: The Day the Tigers Tipped Pitches For the Mick. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe